Cabaret

"Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome!" – this is how the Master of Ceremonies greets his guests every evening in the Kit Kat Club in Berlin at the beginning of the 1930s, where Sally Bowles falls in love with the writer Cliff. They could be so happy, if it weren't for Hitler's seizure of power and the obvious, ominous signs of the dark times to come ...

I am a camera with its shutters open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.

Christopher Isherwood

The British writer Christopher Isherwood lived in Berlin from 1929 to 1930, gathering material for a new book. His experiences formed the basis of the novel "Goodbye to Berlin", which John van Druten brought to the stage as a play entitled "I am a Camera" in 1951. The idea for a musical version was conceived in 1963 by director and producer Harold Prince, who saw parallels between the socio-political climate of 1930s Germany and the racial discrimination of the USA in the 1960s, and who wanted to show that what had happened then in Berlin can keep on happening again. For the music, he went to the composer John Kander and the lyricist Fred Ebb, who wrote hits in the late 1920s style such as "Two Ladies", "Heirat", "Willkommen" (plus later, for the film version with Liza Minnelli, "Maybe This Time", "Mein Herr" and "Money, Money"). The musical was premiered on Broadway in 1966 and went on to win eight Tony Awards (the equivalent of the Oscars in the US theatre); the film version followed suit in 1972 with eight "real" Oscars. Cabaret is still regarded today as a prime example of how to tackle serious themes in the musical genre. In the staging by the Viennese specialist in musicals Werner Sobotka, the exceptionally talented young Nadine Zeintl will be starring as Sally Bowles, with Dustin Smailes as the Master of Ceremonies and 'Kammersängerin' Gisela Ehrensperger as Fräulein Schneider, when the words "Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome!" are heard again in the Reithalle from 18th July.